Methods: The New Center of Gravity in the West
- john raymond
- Aug 28
- 5 min read
Purpose and Design
This section specifies, in disciplined terms, how the alliance will understand the adversary and constrain sabotage while moving forward operationally under a Ukrainian-led center of gravity. Methods are organized around the three analytic pillars and the Raymond Method (MINIMAX), with a fourth, prescriptive pillar for loyal Western action.
Pillar One — Enemy Regime Security: model how Putin’s system (and junior partners) preserve personal rule.
Pillar Two — Enemy Asymmetric Warfare: map and measure disinformation, sabotage, deniable strikes, sanction-evasion logistics.
Pillar Three — Traitor-General Dynamic: treat a captured alliance node—President Trump’s White House—as an internal adversary; derive controls that neutralize sabotage without halting operations.
Pillar Four — Alliance Response: OSINT-first, OpSec-driven execution with Ukraine as primus inter pares — the first among equals.
Each pillar specifies data, procedures, validation, and decision rules; all are reproducible and falsifiable.
Data and Evidence
A. Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) — Primary Driver
Event streams: commercial satellite/radar imagery, maritime AIS, air ADS-B, customs/trade and corporate registries; official communiqués; reputable press (Reuters/FT/BBC/AP); academic and think-tank studies; court dockets; regulator filings.
Information ops corpus: time-series captures of state media, botnets, and platform telemetry to infer coordinated inauthentic behavior and narrative arcs. Peer-reviewed work on Russian online propaganda and bot amplification informs ground truth and classification features.
Truth publication precedent: NATO/UK’s public intelligence releases before and during the 2022 invasion—used here as validated technique to pre-empt disinformation and deny surprise.
B. Attributed/Attributable Operations — Ukrainian OpSec Benchmark
We operationalize “Spiderweb” as the family of Ukrainian deep-strike campaigns against Russian bomber bases and tier-two energy/logistics nodes (e.g., Engels/Dyagilevo and refinery networks), documented in multiple cycles since December 2022 and ongoing. These furnish observable signatures of wartime-grade OpSec (long-range penetration, surprise, repeated effects).
C. Counterintelligence (CI) Events in Europe — Penetration Baseline
Arrests and disruption of Russia-linked sabotage/spy rings in Germany and Poland (2024–2025) serve as indicators of active hostile placement inside EU/NATO states; they calibrate required CI purge depth and monitoring cadence.
D. Alliance Friction — Internal Sabotage Signal
Open reporting and expert analysis on March 2025 U.S. intelligence-sharing pauses with Ukraine are treated as structural risk (single-point-of-failure, political capture), not merely episodic policy noise.
The First Three Analytic Pillars and Minimax Procedures
Pillar One — Enemy Regime Security (ERS)
Objective: infer intent from regime-survival logic; forecast choices that preserve elite control.
Model features (measurable):
Repression gradient: security-service budgets, legal escalations, elite purges, mobilization decrees.
Resource survivability: oil/refinery throughput, export shifts after strikes, fiscal buffers (FX, war taxes), import substitution; shocks linked to Ukrainian interdictions.
External lifelines: third-country logistics (energy, components), sanction-evasion routes, insurance/shipping cover.
Procedure: Bayesian update loop per reporting cycle.
Inputs: OSINT macro/tech data + targeted HUMINT/SIGINT (if available).
Output: ERS score (0–1) per adversary, signaling the pressure level needed for behavioral change.
Validation: back-test on known episodes (e.g., Engels strikes ≈ strategic bomber dispersion; refinery attrition ≈ export plan variance).
Pillar Two — Enemy Asymmetric Warfare (EAW)
Objective: map and counter the toolkit: maskirovka, disinfo, sabotage, cyber, lawfare, economic coercion.
Streams and Methods:
Disinformation Analytics: network analysis (bot/hub detection, narrative birth-death rates, cross-platform synchrony). Classified as state-proximate if timing/lexicon mirror known Kremlin lines; models trained on peer-reviewed datasets.
Sabotage/Agent Handling: pattern extraction from EU arrests; build feature vectors (tasking, tradecraft errors, logistics) to seed watch-lists and canary ops for counter-recruitment.
Sanction-Evasion Graphs: entity resolution across customs, maritime, banking; identify shadow fleets, trans-shipment hubs, and payment cloaks.
Procedure:
Detect: anomaly-based triggers (narrative spikes, unexplained outages, cross-border cash/shipping anomalies).
Attribute: likelihood scoring (technical + behavioral).
Neutralize: targeted disclosures (truth dumps), arrests/expulsions, asset seizures, and surgical interdictions (Ukrainian execution) where lawful.
Validation: effectiveness measured by narrative dominance (alliance share of attention vs. bot-amplified lines), sabotage interdiction rate, and evasion value seized.
Pillar Three — Traitor-General Dynamic (TGD)
Premise: treat President Trump’s White House as a captured alliance node capable of (a) vetoing/intimidating intel flows, (b) leaking tasking/targeting, (c) running influence ops that fracture cohesion, (d) capable of unknown-unknowns.
Controls (designed for hostile insider risk):
Quarantine Architecture: no U.S. custody of keys, tasking, or ledgers; U.S. inputs accepted only via one-way provenance-tagged drops with rate-limiting; auto-sever on correlation with compromise.
Towards Two-Key Doctrine (Allied Soil): work towards 1) sovereign host-nation + Ukrainian operational consent; 2) immutable survivable ledgers record purpose/consent checkpoints to defeat scandal manufacture.
Zero-Trust by Construction: identity-bound access, per-mission enclaves, hardware attestation; authorities expire by default; no “trust-by-badge.”
Emergency Continuity: mission throttles and mirror-cell surge when U.S. obstruction or exposure risk crosses threshold (see Pillar Four).
Validation: quarterly leak half-life and mole dwell-time reductions; ability to sustain effects during/after U.S. pauses in sharing.
Decision Discipline — The Raymond Method (MINIMAX)
Rule: assume adversary (including a captured ally node) selects the action that maximizes allied cost subject to its regime constraints; choose allied actions that minimize maximum plausible harm.
Operationalization:
Gate 1 — Harm-to-Axis: action measurably degrades ERS logistics (e.g., refinery idle capacity spike).
Gate 2 — Cohesion Gain: action measurably strengthens allied confidence (ledgered consent, rapid dispute resolution).
Pillar Four — Methods for the Alliance and Loyal Actors
1) Truth Foundry (OSINT-First)
An EU–Ukraine joint node that collects → verifies → publishes a continuous web of publicly checkable intelligence (maps, timelines, facility watch-lists). Publication is a weaponized truth practice validated in 2022–24 to crowd out Trump and Kremlin narratives.
Outputs: daily public SITREPs; classified annexes for tasking; “exposure packets” for scandal resilience.
2) Ukrainian Execution; European Sustainment
Bridge Cells (Ukraine-led): Kyiv, Lviv, Warsaw, Tallinn, The Hague—time-critical missions with Ukrainian tradecraft.
Mirror Cells (EU): paired units rotating 12–18 months to absorb OpSec; quarterly switch-overs prove redundancy.
Target Sets: bomber bases, ammunition depots, refineries, rail chokepoints—validated by additional sources-documented effect chains (airfield damage, refinery idle capacity, forced export adjustments).
3) Blacklight CI Purge
Time-boxed, rotating external adjudicators (incl. Ukrainian CI-lift teams) shrink services to a cleared cadre; embed canary tradecraft to localize leaks; measure dwell time and false-positive rates.
4) Zero-Trust + Clean-Room Tasking
Identity-bound access; per-mission enclaves; air-gapped planning; disposable tooling; no U.S. SDKs or clouds in the critical path.
5) Rapid Dispute Chamber & Survivable Ledgers
Work towards small-state tribunal (e.g., Denmark, Estonia, Netherlands) rules inside 72 hours; ledgers log purpose/consent without sources/methods so capitals can prove legitimacy on exposure.
6) Industrial/Financial Warfare Integration
Alliance Sanctions Fusion Center merges customs, maritime, banking; seizure authorities coordinated across member laws; multi-year munitions/ISR procurement with EU–Ukraine co-production; metrics: evasion value seized, shell/interceptor output.
Metrics and Falsifiability
Effects: refinery idle capacity (weekly), bomber sortie dispersal, logistics throughput; task-to-effect < 72h.
OpSec/CI: leak half-life, mole dwell time, cross-domain exfil incidents; ability to sustain operations during U.S. sharing pauses.
Info Domain: narrative share vs. bot-amplified lines; time-to-truth dominance post-disclosure.
Governance: consent rates, dispute resolution time, exposure-to-vindication cycle.
Falsification conditions: if (a) Ukrainian deep-strike campaigns cease to produce measurable ERS degradation, (b) CI dwell time does not fall despite Blacklight, or (c) truth-first disclosures fail to regain narrative dominance, prescriptions must be revised while the diagnosis (captured node, penetrated services) is re-tested against fresh data.
Limitations and Controls
Attribution noise: some strikes remain unattributed; use signature-based inference with conservative confidence bounds, anchored to multi-source reporting.
Partisan OSINT: politicized nodes are inputs, not conclusions; their claims are hypotheses tested against independent streams.
Policy volatility: U.S. behavior may oscillate; the architecture assumes resilience under renewed pauses.
Rationale for Ukraine as Linchpin
Only Ukraine currently demonstrates repeatable, wartime-grade OpSec and compounding effect (bomber bases, refineries, logistics inside Russia). This is not an article of faith; it is an empirical observation drawn from documented outcomes and corroborated by reputable sources.
The alliance’s scientific method follows: start with OSINT, test with effect, protect with OpSec, execute with Ukraine, and rebuild Europe to parity. This is how we constrain the Traitor-General, defeat the autocratic axis, and keep the peace durable.
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